


Coming Home

by Ilye



Series: Flawless [5]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:01:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3219914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilye/pseuds/Ilye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having unearthed both memories and secrets during his final visit to Lindon, Glorfindel returns home at last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

**Imladris, c.5 TA**

 

A drizzle had lodged in the valley as Glorfindel rode through her, but even without his cloak, he did not mind. It was warm, and the fine rain settled about him in an oddly comforting manner. The soft sounds of raindrops on leaves and mossy rocks surrounded him with a reassuring crackle and the sweet scent of the wet earth filled his nose when he took a deep breath in. It was as though the valley was gathering him into her damp embrace and drawing him into her heart.

Elrond was waiting for him -- Glorfindel could see him silhouetted on the steps of the house as he approached. The Half-elf was tense; still, except for his right hand where he worried the sapphire ring between his fingers. Neither spoke until Glorfindel had ridden right up to the steps and dismounted.

“I kept my promise,” Glorfindel said at last to the motionless figure. His lips quirked wryly. “Though I suspect you did not believe that I really would return.”

Elrond gave a short, mirthless laugh and descended the steps. “I confess, I half-expected you to be on your way home to Valinor with Cirdan by now.” He spoke to a point just past Glorfindel’s shoulder, then cast his eyes down so that his dark hair slipped forwards and clung to his face and neck in damp tendrils.

“Home?” Glorfindel felt confusion thread through him and he dipped his head to catch Elrond’s eye. “I am home _now_ , Elrond.”

Elrond looked up sharply. His eyes searched Glorfindel’s for a moment, until relief softened the taut lines of his face and he hazarded a smile. Quite abruptly, it stopped raining. “Then,” he said softly, drawing Glorfindel first into a one-armed warriors’ embrace before closing the circle with his other arm, “Welcome home, my friend.”

~~~

Despite having been away a mere seven-night, Imladris felt like it had changed nearly beyond recognition since Glorfindel had left. He remarked as much to Erestor, who materialised from the ether as soon as Glorfindel set foot inside the house and fell into step beside him.

“It is not Imladris that has changed,” Erestor answered, as though it were the plainest fact in the world. Glorfindel stopped walking and inclined his head. Erestor sighed as he turned to face him and closed his eyes for a moment; whether out of irritation or something else, Glorfindel could not tell.

“I don’t know what you discovered in Lindon, Glorfindel, or left behind there,” Erestor continued. “But I am glad to see that you brought yourself back.”

As swiftly as he had appeared, he then vanished in the direction whence they had come. Glorfindel stared after him for a moment, at the same time perplexed and marvelling at Erestor’s ability to transmit affection through disdain. Then he turned and continued to his rooms.

The narrow spiral staircase rising into the eaves was deserted, as usual, and silence shrouded him as he climbed away from the bustle of the main house. The small attic suite had not been intended for a supposed lord such as himself, but Glorfindel had eventually persuaded Elrond to let him occupy this remote corner with the vaulted ceilings and its quietude. It did not offer a balcony, but the tall, arched windows were set with a window seat and an outer ledge wide enough for him to sit on whilst he dangled his legs outside and enjoyed the breathtaking view from upon high. Or, at least, he had used to, before everyone left for battle…

The window hinges were stiff and creaky with disuse. Glorfindel found himself wondering when he had last opened them, but could not recall. _Has it really been so long?_ The breeze kissed his face as he drew the windows open and knelt upon the window seat. Below, the wet valley glistened in the struggling evening sunlight. There were many tents still erected in the house grounds, but further afield they had started to evolve into more permanent dwellings -- which, Glorfindel realised, must have been under construction for quite some time, though he could not remember noticing before.

The industry, the life of the place, was now illuminated with blinding clarity compared with Lindon’s palace of ghosts. Emotion surged through him with alarming intensity, stealing his breath and buckling him sideways onto his elbow. Anger, betrayal, confusion, loss; they mingled with a sense of belonging, of recognition, of identity with all these others who had also lost so much. He closed his eyes against the disorientation of feeling so much after such a time of numbness, bowed his head and allowed the valley to enfold him again in her aura. Slowly he steadied, with the breeze’s fingers in his hair, the waterfall’s rush in his ears and the fresh, green-scented mist in his lungs, and when he eventually lifted his eyes to Imladris again, she twinkled happily at him in the gathering dusk.

A knock came at the door not long afterwards. Glorfindel hesitated, centring himself against the lingering disquiet he still felt, before he called for the visitor to enter. The door swung open and there Elrond stood, a plate in one hand and a bottle under his arm. “I would not normally intrude,” he said quietly into the darkness that had invited itself into the room, “And I know your appetite is not up to much these days, but I wondered if you could be tempted by something more substantial than trail rations.”

Touched, Glorfindel rose from his seat and moved towards Elrond. Through the gloom he could see his friend’s face was pinched in concern and guilt knotted in his stomach. _How many times have I tested his kindness recently? No more._ “I could eat,” he replied honestly. “Thank you, Elrond - would you come in?”

Elrond tilted his head, but if he was surprised then his well-schooled features did not show it and instead relaxed into a half-smile. Glorfindel beckoned him over to the window and reached for a pair of wine glasses on the nearby dresser, which he swapped for the plate of food. Silence embraced them comfortably whilst Glorfindel picked at his dinner and Elrond poured the wine.

“You appear to have returned more yourself,” Elrond said at last when Glorfindel set aside the empty plate and picked up his glass. They had settled into the window seat, one at either end so that they faced each other in the darkness. Glorfindel had not bothered to light candles, for the night had cleared and the moon was bright, and the atmosphere suited his contemplative mood.

“Erestor said that too. I had not thought it quite so obvious.” Glorfindel thought for a moment, weighing up his current emotional state between several long draughts of his wine. “I suppose I feel more myself. I… I feel,” he continued at length. He glanced up to meet Elrond’s grey eyes, luminous in the moonlight. “And that in itself is enough to deal with. Ever since… since…” He paused and swallowed hard. “I have been walking around like an insensitive puppet. That is gone, but it's as if _too much_ has taken its place. It has been so long.”

Elrond’s hand found its way to Glorfindel’s bare foot and rested there reassuringly. “Revisiting Lindon dislodged your emotions,” he said gently. “Even though he’s gone, it brought him back to you, and stirred the part of you that lived for him, and lost him.” Glorfindel nodded, but did not trust himself to speak. Elrond continued. “Ereinion left you behind, Glorfindel. Painful as it may be, you cannot go on living until you leave him behind as well.”

Glorfindel looked sharply up, eyes stinging and feeling altogether too bright. “I cannot forget him, Elrond. I do not want to.”

“I did not mean that you had to forget him.” Elrond’s voice soaked through him like a balm. His hand was warm, steady, grounding, on Glorfindel’s foot. “None of us will ever forget him. But you needed to visit Lindon to feel his absence. Five years is nothing by our usual reckoning -- you have spent easily ten times as long apart from him before. Yet how different it is when the other is no longer there to visit… You could not carry on here without acknowledging that he is not there now.”

Glorfindel nodded and closed his eyes. The Lindon he had left behind was a world and a lifetime apart from the place to which he used to return; the secrets revealed by moonlight in the last night he spent there had made sure of that. The absence of its king -- _his_ king -- had drained its life away, leaving nothing more than a beautiful, uninhabited exoskeleton. But once…

 

_He crept in through the door and whispered it shut behind him. There was no movement from the bed._

_The balcony drapes were left carelessly open, letting the moonlight spill onto the flagstones. He stole across the room, paling from a shadow into a moonlit streak as he splashed through the quicksilver puddles. Shadow blanketed one half of the bed, and him as well as he glided up to its edge. The lightness of his footsteps did not alert its occupant; he paused; watched; thought; knelt._

_Grey-blue eyes gazed past him into dreams and loose black hair streaked chasms into the pillow. He watched the sleeping face for a moment, appreciating its refined monochrome lines, then bowed and kissed the slightly parted lips._

_Gil-galad’s face came alive and he started, blinking. Alarm crossed his face, but was chased away by a smile as he recognised the intruder. “Glorf--”_

_“Shh!” He covered Gil-galad’s mouth with his palm, letting his mischief show on his face and bent to replace his hand with his lips once more. The king did not protest and rose up happily into the offered kisses. Hands went to Glorfindel’s waist, balancing him as he slipped a leg across the prone form and knelt over Gil-galad. Sleepy, lazy kisses grew harder, fiercer, interrupted only by Glorfindel’s hasty pauses to shed an item of clothing so that large, warm hands could map his bare skin. He pushed needily into the pressure, feeling his flesh come alive at the long-missed touches._

_When his road-worn garments were eventually gone he took longer pause, kicking down the sheets that covered Gil-galad so he could sit back on his heels, and glanced down appreciatively. Gil-galad smirked at him and opened his mouth to speak, but his words were swallowed by a groan as long fingers curled around both of their erections and lightly teased their way up and down. Glorfindel let his head fall back, breath catching as his fingers played and he listened to the similar effect that was having on his lover’s breathing. Moonlight splashed onto his face and stole the colour from the golden hair tipping sensuously down his back. Gil-galad’s hands were on his thighs, gripping, tightening, asking for more, so he gave it, a little firmer and a little faster._

_It was enough, but not for long. Glorfindel leaned forward again, hushing Gil-galad’s husked growl of annoyance with a deeply tongued kiss whilst he fumbled blindly for the nightstand drawer. It had been some time since its last use, but he found the vial in its usual place thanks to Gil-galad’s unbroken habits. He spilled its contents into the king’s waiting palm -- probably too much, but he didn’t care -- and shivered as those strong hands slicked their way up the insides of his thighs, caressed his balls, then further back…_

_Scalding pressure, then the sweet ache of fullness. Hips wiggled, fingers crooked; pleasure burst and a purr and a vibrated laugh. Then emptiness momentarily, followed by something else -- a muted cry, a bitten lip, a hesitation. An adjustment or two, reassurance and then, at long last, motion, unity, overriding burning thighs and sobbing breath to total completion._

_Stillness enclosed them and held the world at bay. They pressed their damp bodies together along their lengths, craving contact even though their coupling was complete. The moonlight had shifted; morning approached. Gil-galad sighed contentedly and at last broke their silence. “You seem well.”_

_“I am well enough,” Glorfindel murmured, nosing his way into his favourite place at the crook of Gil-galad’s neck and breathing hotly against the skin there. “And better for having you.” The arm around his waist tightened._

_“Indeed -- you will have to go away more often if you bring this kind of welcome home with you.”_

 

A short shudder shot through Glorfindel; Elrond’s thumb had found its way to his ankle and stroked across the tail of the scar. The ghost of another memory shook itself loose.

“I once told him that I had a lover whom I watched die when Gondolin fell,” he began. His eyes still felt bright, but now controllably so. “I told him that it was not the kind of love over which it was worth laying down one’s life. This, I feel, is different altogether. This is like no grief I have ever felt before.” He winced as Elrond’s fingers dug painfully into his foot. “Ow! Elrond -- relax. I do not mean that I am going to fade. I mean simply that my life is irreversibly altered and I need to learn to live it again.” The sharp fingers loosened their grip a little, but Elrond’s expression remained unconvinced. “When I was struggling to adjust to this second life, Ereinion was my constant, my definition -- and, it now is revealed, my purpose for existing. I feel like I belong here now, in Imladris with you, but I cannot help wonder why I still exist now that my purpose has been served.”

When he looked up, Elrond was frowning. “Go on,” he urged. Glorfindel sighed heavily, trying to loosen the the still-fresh ache that banded his chest and restricted his lungs.

“Ereinion knew that he was going to die, Elrond. Cirdan did too. They kept it from me. The Valar have -- they used me as a tool, as a channel, to communicate with Ereinion and to prepare him for his final battle. I do not remember -- and I don’t know if I am glad for that or not -- but I am now told that Mandos spoke through me to Ereinion and prophesied his death.”

He heard Elrond’s intake of breath and met the sad, startled eyes. “Cruelty, thy name is fate,” Elrond murmured. “And you did not know?”

Glorfindel shook his head. “Not an inkling. It made leaving Lindon behind so easy, for it now seems to me to be filled with lies. But somehow what Ereinion did has made me love him more, rather than less.”

“The ways of the Valar can seem insensitive at times.” Glorfindel felt his lips quirk up at the understatement in Elrond’s voice as his friend continued, “But never would a person be made purely for a single purpose and then unmade when that had been served. You are meant to have this life. I can tell you until the points drop off my ears about how you have your purpose here, and how loved you are here. But I suspect you will need to realise this for yourself in your own time.”

Briefly their eyes connected, until Glorfindel could no longer stand the sorrow in Elrond’s face that compounded the tightness around his ribs. He looked away. His head dropped forwards and moonlight-silvered gold obstructed his view. “Ah, how I miss him, Elrond,” he whispered.

Suddenly Elrond was at his side, his arms winding their way around Glorfindel and for the first time that evening, Glorfindel felt as though he was giving comfort as much as taking it. “Oh, my friend,” sighed Elrond as they sagged into each other. “I miss him too.”


End file.
